By candlelight: A reflection

Where do you find yourself at this point in time?

Spoken rendition of “By candlelight”.

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Writing

I rarely seem to write in the evening. At this point in my life, writing poetry typically fits best into my early morning, before exercise, breakfast and work. However, on the evening of July 10 I found myself wanting to write as that morning I had been unable to do so. I made the room moody, turning lights off, lighting just a few large candles, gathering my notebook and pen, and sat down at the dining room table. This little poem was written that evening and slowly edited over the next week and a half.

Photo by Peter Mason on Unsplash

Inspiration

When I sat down, I did not have something specific I wanted to say, needed to get off my chest, or a question to ask. So I wrote in an attempt to recreate the emotion in the room without describing the room. Frustration existed from a day that seemed to hold no space for creativity among its busyness. Anxiety tingled lightly, an emotion that is often prevalent for me during a busy work season but in this evening was beginning to fade. Peace was emerging out of the beautiful darkness in that space. I was feeling a sense of longing to write more frequently and for longer periods of time. Tiredness was upon me but so was inspiration to act so as to not acquiesce to only society’s expectations of productivity and commerce. As I read this poem back to myself, I still feel these emotions captured in this verse.

I see two patterns of time in this piece. The first is standing at the end of a day looking back. We have all been there, looking back at a day in frustration or despair at what we had to do or needed to get done, and bemoaning the things we wanted to do that did not happen. The second is a circle of time, beginning with the writing at the current point in time, looking back through a moment and the day, and finding oneself back at the page, right where they want to be, back at their inspiration and their joy, anticipating that this spiral will continue, as it is the nature of life for those that pay attention.

There are also small twists in the flow of the language meant to portray the unexpected things that occur in life. Walking on a page, a pen that dances, a day that can write but that missed the plot, the plot of a story and a plot of land, writing as a construction project, a moth drawn to a poem through a strange use of the word alight. The unexpected can be daunting and disrupting, but in the case of this little poem, I feel tells a different story of what those moments can mean…playfulness.

May you find your own moments of inspiration, each and every day.

Brian

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If you missed the “A Poem” post of By candlelight, you can read it here!

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